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Old-school RPGs? Please. That Kickstarter trend is so a few seconds ago. Now it’s all about mind-bogglingly ambitious revivals of legendary space series that need your help in the form of several trillion dollars. OK, maybe not that much, but Star Citizen came in space, no one can hear you screaming into existence asking for $2 million, and now David Braben is trying to resurrect Elite (again) for the low, low collective price of £1,250,000 – which is basically $2 million.

That’s right – Elite is back at long, long last, in the form of Elite: Dangerous. Are you ready to remember how much rage and sorrow could be extracted from the mere process of docking? I know I am.

The Kickstarter page itself is, unfortunately, almost completely lacking in concrete details. Braben talks somewhat vaguely about his plans, but there aren’t any videos or screenshots – it seems to be banking on backers’ sheer excitement over a sequel they’ve waited for forever. Admittedly, it seems like this one’s largely in the idea phase at this point, as Braben describes the Kickstarter as “a means of test-marketing the concept to verify there is still interest in such a game that extends beyond the individuals who regularly contact me about the game, and raising the funds to do so.” Here, though, is how he envisions the game at this point:

“Elite: Dangerous is the game I have wanted Frontier to make for a very long time. The next game in the Elite series – an amazing space epic with stunning visuals, incredible gameplay and breath-taking scope, but this time you can play with your friends too. I want a game that feels more like the original Elite to fly, and with more rapid travel (to allow for the multi-player nature of the game) – so you travel quickly using local ‘hyperspace’ travel rather than by fast-forwarding time – but with the rich galaxy of Frontier – and more, so much more.”

“Up to now “Elite” has been worked upon by a small team as a ‘skunk-works’ activity in the background as availability permits. Nevertheless, we have been preparing; laying the technology and design foundations for when the time is right. And that time is now.”

Also of note: Braben’s company, Frontier Developments, currently employees 235 people across multiple countries. Unless I’m forgetting someone, that means it’s easily the largest company yet to catapult onto the already quite weighed down Kickstarter bandwagon. Unfortunately, however, its recent track record is, um, less than encouraging – with the likes of Kinectimals, Kinect Disneyland Adventures, and Dog’s Life leading the charge. Meanwhile, its most recent project of a more ambitious scale, The Outsider, has been on hold for a while now. That said, Frontier was also responsible for the hugely underrated Lost Winds on Wii, though there’s not generally much crossover between sprawling space sims and charmingly cartoony platformers.

So then, thoughts? I mean, this is pretty exciting given that Elite’s another one of those games modern designers still haven’t quite grasped the brilliance of, but the long wait suggests that could be just as true of its creators as of other studios. Also, even Old-School RPG’s Kickstarter page was stronger than this one, and it fell flat enough that Brenda Romero and Tom Hall yanked it. Hopefully there’ll be a substantial update soon – if Frontier really have been quietly working on something for years, surely that means they’ve got something to show as they sing for their £1.25m supper?

Right now, Frontier’s shooting for March 2014. Do you plan on giving Elite: Dangerous a push to help it get off the ground?

well it seems people are willing to throw vast sums of cash at it on nostalgia alone, all 5 £5000 pledges have been filled and 4 of the £1500. be interesting how many of them will be honoured. personally i’ll hold off and see how it goes.

No video, no screenshots, no concept art even. It says the multiplayer networking is done, but doesn’t give an idea of how many players it will support, play with friends or on your own doesn’t exactly suggest epic space combat. Games in huge multiplayer procedurally generated worlds would be much more fun if you could run into hostile players at any time. Complete Missions! Wow, sounds interesting. No-one has done that before. Sorry apart from the Elite name it’s not really selling it to me. Star Citizen is more appealing at this point and1.25 million sterling is a lot of moolah, they better have some killer updates lined up.

Rationally, you’re entirely correct. Cashing in on the nostalgia of older gamers with nothing more than a logo is pretty lame, to say the least.

But my, what nostalgia…

I’ve gone ahead and backed it purely because I’ve been watching for Elite’s inevitable appearance on there ever since this whole Reviving-classic-games-via-Kickstarter gravy-train started rolling. I’m not going to let rational thought get in the way of that fantasy.

I think this is his way of saying. Look we want to make this game but every time I bring it up to a publisher they just tell me space games are dead. However, all you elite fans won’t leave me alone. If you want me to put any more effort in show me the money and I will make the game.

“an amazing space epic with stunning visuals, incredible gameplay and breath-taking scope” stops just short of being a buzzword storm. It promises so much without actually promising anything.

I didn’t think you could launch a kickstarter without a video? As in, I thought it was part of the terms of use that you had to provide one. I can’t imagine how people can bring themselves to back it without a video, or concept art, or actual details of how the world will work. At this point it doesn’t just look bad, it looks like a scam.

I’m a massive fan of Elite. Even I think this pitch is fucking terrible. No, I am not putting money down yet until they get off their arses and work to convince me they know what they’re doing. Elite 4 has been vapourware for years, this pitch does nothing to convince me that it will ever be otherwise.

I promise I’ll bring you a new elite, throw your money at me! I’ve been working on procuring a licence to make the game and an engine and graphics and procedural generation for a decade! Yeah I have! I won’t show you anything I have achieved but trust me, I will bring you a new elite game for only £1,000,000.

Except Double FIne are a successful studio with some great games under their belt. Frontier made Kinectimals, and failed to make the Outsider. And a video with a pitch is far better than no video at all. Oh, and Braben has supposedly been working on this for a decade, but has nothing to show for it.

Fair enough. But what about Wasteland 2 then? They done 2 games + a bunch of mobile games.

Star Citizen, was quite over the top, but thats their aim and they have set some high goals. The product could be over ambitious and crash and burn.

If he said he has been working on it for on and off for a decade, then yes I agree he should have something to show. Even if its a old build, if it shows the vision he aims for he could easily sell people on it.

What makes me scratch my head is how he’s released that right after Old School RPG decided to back off because they felt ashamed for riding on the coattails of their previous games with nothing to show for their new project. This is arguably even worse than Old School RPG was.

I’d be happy to have a new Elite game, but I feel uneasy rewarding such utter lack of effort in preparing a worthwhile pitch.

Prediction: This one will hit about 500-600K in the first few days, then sit there for a while, before breaking through to hit the requirement shortly before it ends. It simply doesn’t have the name brand, screenshots, or concept art, to get the multi-millions that some of the other nostalgia projects have.

Also, is this the highest goal for a (somewhat) reputable Video Game project yet? Frontier has chutzpah, at least.

Edit: Wait, it’s 1,250,000 POUNDS, not 1,250,000 Dollars? There is no way in hell that this is making it off of the ground. These people don’t really know what to do with Kickstarter, do they?

I’d actually never heard of Elite until I started reading RPS (a few years ago, and I’m 30 now). I’m not proud of this fact, especially as a big fan of space sims, but I guess it goes to show that there are gamers out there that won’t know anything about it, nor why it deserves their money.

I sorta agree with you but… depends why you played Elite. Some people played for the trading, which Eve does. Some played Elite for the combat, which isn’t comparable to Eve. The Evochorn or X series of games are closer. Or Freelancer even. Or any of the open source community built Elite clones that are out there.

Kickstarting Elite isn’t far off Kickstarting a new version of Defender in my head, because I played both a lot on my Beeb. Obviously Elite was more complicated than Defender (well, Planetoid) but it’s still pretty basic compared to modern games, and there’s nothing in the pitch to suggest what sets it apart.

I don’t remember much about Elite 2, being too young to really get to grips with Newtonian orientated space navigation and combat, but I certainly don’t remember it being anywhere near as boring as the X series. I hope to god that this suggested Elite sequel ends up nothing like that time sink, space truck simulator.

I’ve played both. Elite is space trading and combat in a massive universe. EVE Online is space trading and combat in a massive universe – with many people. Granted EVE’s combat works a bit differently, but the main reasons for that are down to the trade-offs needed in order to get space trading and combat games to work with many people in a way that remains vaguely performant.

To be fair to EVE, CCP have acknowledged and admitted that, which is why they’re in the process of completely revamping the flagging and bounty systems.
They’re even working on fixing the combat to some extent by getting rid of ship tiers and rebalancing *everything*.

Of course, it’s EVE, so whether it ends up working well is always a guess.

“oh look how well Chris Roberts is doing with Star Citizen. Hang on, he is making the game I want to make but have instead spent my time making Kinectimals, damn, maybe if I just stick the name Elite up, along with a load of text about how cool it would be people will back it, despite my massive goal”

Most people playing games now have never played elite (I’m 27 and it was before my time), so to ask for £1.25m on a nostalgia project without even a working demo is foolhardy.

Whatever nostalgia there was to be harped on has acquired at least an extra decade’s worth of dust over similarly content-lite kickstarters. And there is nothing to be shown, no proof of concept, nada.
The most optimistic view is that this is simply an announcement to start a “real” campaign in a years time, for a game due in 2015.

Yeah, I’m in the same boat (27, woo). I played some Elite in passing on a friend’s computer but that’s it. I know it was meant to be a great game but beyond that I’ve got as much information as his pitch.

Plenty of people have made bigger games with smaller teams in their bedrooms. I’m not in the habit of giving handouts to established businesses for hopes and dreams. Dreams that have been dashed before.

He talks a good game but he’s been cashing in on Elite for two decades with nothing to show for it.

He’s talked about everything Frontier has done for years as being part of their ongoing tech research into a new Elite. The Rollercoaster game was somehow a testbed for possible Elite tech, as was the Dogs game. Those are the two examples I know of, concretely. So I don’t doubt his intentions, but I do wonder whether anyone apart from my generation, who played the original Elite new on their BBC Bs and Acorn Electrons back in the 1980s, will go for this. The geezer should put some more concrete stuff on the KS page for starters. Sheesh.

Elite: Dangerous will come with space traffic control officers. That tech took decades to develop, y’know. But now, happily, there will be no more unfortunate hurried Viper/innocent trader docking crashes.

Now that’s an idea for one of the higher Kickstarter tiers: “pay 40 GBP to unlock a docking computer that won’t send you at max thrusters into a station wall”.

Personally I’ll stay away from this Kickstarter project, Braben can (and will!) have my money when he presents the finished, full game. At least Roberts is passionate about Star Citizen, compared to him the Elite pitch looks – to put it mildly – half-arsed.

To me this falls into that category of extremely cynical KS projects – those which could easily be funded by other means, but KS allows the developer to effectively remove themselves from all financial risk if the project fails in whatever form.

I’d really like to be able to support this – I spent the best part of three years playing Elite pretty intensively and then another 18 months loving Frontier – but Braben’s record for delivery is not inspiring. Frontier and First Encounters were wonderful but so terribly buggy, and he’s been claiming to work on Elite IV for nearly as long as DNF’s development.

All in all, I’d rather trust in the Pioneer team to deliver my Elite/Frontier fix.

Well nothing Braben has done on the games front in recent years has made any impact on my consciousness, although kudos is deserved for his work on the Raspberry Pi which is neat. From a read of the Kickstarter page the bit that concerns me, apart from all the stuff that isn’t there, is ‘a means of test-marketing the concept to verify there is still interest in such a game’. Which I translate as meaning If a gazillion people start throwing money at them then they’ll get off their arses and start doing some coding and artwork but if the money isn’t forthcoming no loss to Frontier as, apart from knocking up a very basic Kickstarter pitch, they won’t have put much more effort into it than the ‘background’ work they mention. This doesn’t exactly shriek of commitment. And if this background work has produced anything of worth why isn’t it on the Kickstarter page?

According to David there is some footage playing in the background of this video; link to bbc.co.uk

It’s pretty hard to make out. Not sure why they didn’t include some with the initial launch, but I suspect that Project Eternity style we will be bombarded with a slow release of details over the coming weeks…

From what can be seen it looks like a bit of spacescape animation in a loop. I’d imagine any competent graphics person could knock something up like that without much difficulty. Creating realistic space/planet scapes procedurally that go on forever requires a more significant effort but if they’ve done that you can’t see it in the vid (or on the Kickstarter page). Had to laugh as the camera zoomed in on PCs showing the Elite Dangerous logo as if there was something there when in fact it was just a desktop wallpaper.

That’s not how the industry works. Unless the studio is rich, some other party has to fund each project – usually a publisher. If Frontier Developments was wealthy I doubt they would have made Kinectimals, and it seems like no publisher has been willing to pay for a new Elite so far.

Now they see their chance to finally get some funding for Elite, through Kickstarter. I wish them luck!

Yeah, that made my heart sink as well – unless you’re going the MMO route, which wouldn’t interest me in the slightest – why would you want multi player – surely it will end up as two tiny needles in a procedurally generated haystack!

If multi player is to be in Elite, make the players be both working on board the same ship or fleet, locked together. Then you can have a multiplayer Elite game but keep the series consistent with itself!

I can understand that some people won’t share my cynicism towards David Braben, but I can’t understand the rush to back. You’ve got two months for this, why would anyone not wait for him to post something informative (and hopefully demonstrative) on the KS page?

the more people fund early, the bigger the ground swell. If a kickstarter makes a ton of dosh straight of the bat it often gets a lot of publicity. Also, other backers take note of large sums already having been donated and have much more confidence in the likely end result – the more funding, the better quality the likely product. Especially when stretch goals are involved.

Sorry, I understand the idea of backing early in general, but as you say, this pitch is a joke. I would have thought waiting to see what the project is actually going to be might trump the urge to try to influence others to back.

No, you’re totally right but some people (actually including me but I’m not pledging on THAT pitch) have been dreaming of this game for decades, and I guess desperation takes a hold. I’ll admit I was initially tempted, despite my brain functions.

I couldn’t agree more – this is a dream come true, but a nightmare all in one! A long time has passed since the first encounters debacle, has he still got it in him to make another Elite game? I could get behind the pitch if it wasn’t filled with buzzwords, even if there were no details but passion. Right now, I am kicking myself but I cannot back this project.

I am so disappointed. I expect this from Jon Romaro et al, that’s their way and we love them for it, but that’s not the mindset I want to make an elite game.

Also, it’s rather the mentality I feel you need to have with Kickstarter. It’s crowdfunding after all, you shouldn’t be doing it with money quantities you’d be upset to lose. It’s very much ‘take a punt’ for me, so if it all falls through I’m not too upset, but it *might* be something fantastic, and I’m prepared to take that risk.

Have all the good elite jokes gone already??
Oh wait Braben is still trying to ride the success of Elite, after 3 decades.

I can imagine the meeting going like this…..
Old school RPGs? Funded
Wing Commander remake? Funded
Lets do elite, we’ve not spoken about it publicly for 5 minutes. Hey why are they so cynical of our cash grab?

Best Elite fix I’ve had for a while is link to starwraith.com. It’s got potential but a bloody hard learning curve… what do you mean I’m out of fuel AGAIN.

As much as I’m in favour of an Elite kickstarter (because Elite and Frontier were the biggest games of my childhood), why Elite: Dangerous? Granted, it’s better than Elite: Mostly Harmless, but it’s also worse than Elite: Deadly.

This is polarising my brain. On the one hand, Frontier Elite was one of, if not THE game of my youth. The prospect of a modern follow up by the brain behind it is mouth watering.

On the other hand, as varangian said above, this kickstarter pitch is barely existent, it’s practically the laziest pitch I have seen. In fact, if I recall correctly, Braben has been vaguely discussing the sort of maybe prospect of sometime perhaps doing a followup in the series for decades. If he really cared about doing the game at all, I can only imagine that he would have given it a serious go at some point already.

Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen kickstarter may not be the slickest run campaign in the universe but it is clear how passionate they are about that game, the incredible work that has already gone into it and the patent desire he has to make it the best goddamn space sim in history.

As much as it pains me, as I have a deep abiding passion for the series and would love nothing more than to see it rise like a pheonix: I would recommend anyone considering throwing money at Elite: Dangerous to about turn and throw it a Star Citizen, which has a real shot at the stars. The timing of this Elite kickstarter could also have been better I suspect

I think one of the main reasons I haven’t preordered is because the digital download price is the same as it’d be on release. So I think I’ll save myself the risk and wait until release before deciding whether to buy.

Well, that’s fair enough, although something to consider is that it wouldn’t be a pre-order. It is funding. The money you give now should go directly to improving the quality of the final product, whereas buying post release would just go to the profit margin.

The project creators agree (through the Terms of Use) to “make a good faith attempt to fulfill each reward by its Estimated Delivery Date” and “are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill”. So I guess you could sue them in small claims if they don’t do either of those within a reasonable time of the delivery date – unless of course you’re an international backer, that would usually be impractical.

No sorry, Prison Architect and Sir at least have something to show for themselves, I’ll get behind that. You can’t just say “Hey, remember this logo? Well now it has a crappy subtitle. Please give my huge studio a million pounds.”

I’ve backed it, yeah maybe just for the name and nostalgia but I’m ready to accept that I may be chucking my money away.
Personally I don’t like that we’ve all just decided that for a pitch to be successful, it HAS to have the team personally talking to you, and an almost finished game. Basically you want a team to spend lots of time and money selling the idea to you. I say no, while that it is preferable it shouldn’t be a requirement.
If for some of you it is, then fair enough.

I’m toying with doing a Kickstarter for my stuff but it seems so much hassle to sort out reward tiers etc. I mean if you’re not inviting people to basically be VIP’s in your studio, give them 78 copies of the game each and a personal t-shirt and a statue of your face in-game – then the rewards are frowned upon as ‘cheap’ or ‘crap’.
I mean come on!? You’re backing the game, not the merchandise!!

What happened to just a copy of the game and being in the credits being enough? ;)

Saying that, I just pledged £150 to be a member of ‘The Elite’…
Sucker :O
xx

If it was a small team asking for a relatively small amount of money, then a barebones pitch is perhaps ok.

But this is a massive developer asking for a massive amount of money (one of the highest, if not the highest targets I’ve seen at least) with next to no details on how they’re going to transform it into a game.

Agreed. Kickstarter backers are mostly self-entitled whiners. They expect an extremely well-produced video/etc, and to be paying less than the sell price (see one guy in these comments), and a bunch of stupid extras like t-shirts.

Well I sure as hell expect to be getting a discount on the eventual retail price if I’m investing my money in the game’s development. After all, the game might be abandoned (not super likely), or wind up awful (certainly possible), or simply not be particularly good (all too possible).

Retail games get demos and/or reviews, which conveniently enable us to avoid spending our hard-earned money on them if they turn out bad.

Investors, on the other hand, aren’t guaranteed a great game; or a good game; or a game at all. They’re risking their money in the hope that they get their money’s worth in return, so if the project owner isn’t giving people a reason to invest, why would anyone do so?

Now, obviously different projects & developers inspire different levels of confidence in their abilities to deliver on their promises, so these things will vary on a case-by-case basis, but as a general rule I expect a risk to come with a (potential) reward, and if you consider that to be an unreasonable sense of entitlement then I say that you don’t really get the concept of investing…

How can it be self-entitled when he is asking for our money? We are merely setting the terms in which we will be happy to give it to the project. Nothing entitled or whiny about that. If he doesn’t want to meet those terms, fine, but he doesn’t get our money, simples.

And what are we asking for?

1) Some passion which demonstrates this is a project coming from his heart, not a cash cow for his business. Kickstarters tend to want to help peoples dream projects come to life, not be a bailout for a struggling business.

2) Some information on what he is planning for the game. Clearly what he has told us isn’t anywhere near enough to get people in the giving mood.

3) Some demonstration of what he has already achieved. Has he sketched some ships on the back of an envelope? Has he worked out the formulae of the physics? Has he got any cool ideas? Has he got a working game engine? Then damn well show us!!! Show us the energy you have already applied to the project, otherwise it looks like it’s not that important to him. If it’s not important to him, why would we give him our money to make it happen.

“Personally I don’t like that we’ve all just decided that for a pitch to be successful, it HAS to have the team personally talking to you, and an almost finished game. Basically you want a team to spend lots of time and money selling the idea to you. I say no, while that it is preferable it shouldn’t be a requirement.”

I don’t need a slick video or a nearly completed game, but I do generally want the developer to have a plan and some in-progress work to show they’ve already invested some of their own time, money and effort in their project. Seriously, if the devs aren’t committed enough to their own project to do that, then why should the backers risk their money?

“What happened to just a copy of the game and being in the credits being enough? ;)”

Shadowcat had a good response to this above, but I’ll also point out that there seems to have been a fair bit of inflation recently in the cost of assorted rewards tiers from the start of the kickstarter game trend to now. For example, the Doubefine or Wasteland 2 basic “just the game” reward cost $15. The same reward for the Elite kickstarter is 40 POUNDS. (There’s a limited quantity of early-bird slots at 30 pounds, but that’s still more than triple the cost.) It’s likely I’d pay less for it just by buying it at release.

I did not believe it possible (elite is quite possibly my favourite game ever, even above xcom), but no. As said in the article, Braben has a shit track record of late, I can’t just go and take his word for it…

Elite , for those un-initiated. Was a miracle. If someone says the certain game was before its time. Elite was 20 years before its time. For me and many people a best game of all times.

But what does it means in todays landscape ?

Last Elite was made before pentium computers. And there were countless games trying to walk in same gameplay shoes. Only one that (IMHO) suceeded and was still not horribly boring (like X3) was Freelancer. And now both the guy that made Freelancer and the guy that made ELITE going head to head.

Honestly I am giving Chris Roberts clear advantage , because his games were more recent – And yes , he had something to show. Braben goes on nothing except ancient fame. And probably worst kickstarter pitch of all times.

I will give the money for the sake of old times , and deep respect for original game. But how about younger people ? This means nothing for them.

I really think Braben should step up his game , and show us some “modern” features (and gameplay videos) if we are to ever see this succeed.

And we also have a “Elite like” game with flying to proceduraly generated planets : Infinity:Quest for Earth

So basically we have games that covered every possible aspect of Elite (with various degrees of success)

Only Elite I would be really excited about is MMO Elite. And I doubt Braben is able to pull that (neither did he advertise it) I know we kind of have it in EVE. But sans twitch based combat its really not it.

I think Independence War 2 also nailed the trading and exploring aspects and has some decent combat, although obviously you were stuck being a Space Pirate. It’s worth whatever GOG are currently asking for it.

I think Elite for the 21st century IS a good idea. Whether it should be down with this half arsed pitch is another matter, but it’s good to see people showing interest in space based games in a big way. As someone with fond memories of X-Wing and Tie Fighter, I can only say it’s been a while…

Odd, for ages they had Elite IV listed as in development on their website. Alongside that other big project (The Outsider? The Something?). I find myself conflicted by this.

One the one hand it’s Elite.

On the other hand I remember the unholy mess of Frontier and First Encounters. Frontier was playable until the universe simulation went to pot and people stopped appearing for their own assassinations! :D

This perplexes me. Elite is one of the games that made me. The brand pushes all my nostalgia buttons at once. Yet Elite was a game I played by myself and got taken in by it’s cozy yet thrilling space-faring charms. The mention of multi-player makes me wary. And the pitch is painfully minimal. I might back this, but it’s going to take more convincing.

Elite didn’t have a Newtonian flight model. If you stopped thrusting, your ship would grind to a halt like a car. Nothing in space orbited or was capable of being in orbit, it just hung in it’s co-ordinates in the ether and paid no regard for gravity or forces of any description. Personally I way prefer Newtonian because of how dynamic the battles were in Frontier: E2 but that may be a combination of rose tints and other factors in the game.

Hehe, compared to elite – come to a halt, joystick the reticule on to target moving in a circle around you and press fire button, that was dynamic!!

I have to say though, I always turned off autopilot in combat, probably because I didn’t want to take up precious cargo tonnage with shielding (Well until I got my panther clipper, then I left off weapons, added a little shielding and autopiloted into every ship which dared interrupt me!)

Basically, what I want in my space sims is for my ship to handle something like an X-Wing, which it to say, like a Spitfire in space. Then I can dogfight properly, and without having to worry about annoying aeroplane-y things like stalling and the ground. That’s essentially what I love about space sims: I can dogfight without stalling or hitting the ground.

The Newtonian reality of zero-g, zero atmosphere flight is sparingly using little gas jets in exactly equal opposing amounts lest you spiral horribly out of control. I find this isn’t conducive to dogfighting. For years, new space sims have insisted on having realism. I don’t really want realism. Realism means having silent, invisible lasers, and then where would we be?

My recollection of combat in Frontier is the same as AmateurScience’s. It’s either autopilots at dawn, or taking control yourself as two ships head at each other with a closing speed of 12,000 km/h and no way of stopping or turning.

@Ich Will: BSG didn’t really have fully Newtonian physics, though, IIRC. It paid lip service to them (to add to its overall aesthetic of (semi-)realism) while still going very much for a Spitfires in Space look and feel.

@Thirith – Sounds good to me! As long as people don’t want it to basically handle like a boat, as the original Elite did, I’m happy – You’ll certainly not catch me complaining about spitfires in space, that sounds epic!

Ah ok, strange way to do things. I wonder if those 20 or so folk realised they were paying £10 more for the same thing, or whether they consciously just wanted to contribute more to the development. Strange.

David has given some more details in the comments section: “Thanks for all the kind comments! So answering a few questions together: …yes – space should be black not blue…I have always loved ‘Baba Yaga’… managing market economics is a challenge but the plan is indeed to have supply/demand affect price …We will add more content here over the next days and weeks…”

And now he’s got his mates from the Beeb to bolster the backers. This project will make its goal just because there are more than 1.25 million people willing to pay £1 to play a new Elite. link to bbc.co.uk

It’s slightly worrying that he’s going to add more content after the thing has launched. First impressions count, and if he adds videos and stuff later it might well be too late for some people. Take Star Citizen’s approach and launch strong (although granted, Roberts couldn’t decide which platform he wanted to crowdfund on).

A few reasons not to back before we have concrete elements (details, videos or screenshots) displayed on the KS page:

1.

“We will rely heavily on artist-directed procedural generation, using techniques that are a logical expansion of what was done in the previous “Elite” and “Frontier” games. This will greatly reduce the required budget”

is somewhat of a naive, and worrying, claim. Generating tiling polygons in 3D space is not quite the same thing as generating believable, procedural 3D worlds with modern graphics. See how much time the guys from infinity have spent working on similar technology with believable results, and try to imagine the difference in algorithms from Elite and Frontier games.

2. No video, not even a piece of concept art although Elite 4 was in development for years and they’re using it as a base, as demonstrated by the fact their multiplayer architecture is already functional;

3. Not a single mention of special scripted missions. The open-ended, infinitely available trade and transport missions made the bulk of the games but what kept us running were the high-risk, high-reward unique missions, creating at least some kind of accountable end-game state. An Elite game absolutely needs those, even if it means they have to be instanced for each player, which looks like what they’re doing anyway;

4. The whole studio makes easy, almost money-grabbing games. Not garbage, just meh. And he admits there hasn’t been a lot of time alotted to Elite 4. So, is really the network code already there? How many programmers have experience in procedural generation?

Am I the only one that would rather that Ian Bell was making this pitch rather than Braben?

Dunno why, but I’ve always felt that way for some reason. Okay, sure, it seems like Bell has done nothing since Elite, but somehow that seems more reassuring than going off what Braben’s managed to offer us since then.

Well I’ll keep an eye on this pitch anyway, and see if ever turns into an actual pitch at some point.

Indeed, the Raspberry Pi has been vastly more successful than the RPF anticipated, which is part of the reason they’ve now been able to move production to the UK, where Sony now assemble them. Original production estimates ranged as low as 10,000 units, but the Sony contract is for 300,000 with a similar number already having been produced abroad.

One thing I’m still not clear on though is exactly what Braben’s involvement in the creation of the RP actually was. There are various interviews out there with the Great Ego himself which refer to him as “the inventor of the Raspberry Pi” or similar (and there are of course a number of sources out there which give the impression that he was solely responsible for Elite), but as far as I can make out from other sources the whole project was well under way long before he became a trustee of the Foundation.

A new Elite? Yeah pull the other one Dave, I’ve heard that bullshit from you far to many times. I’d have more faith in 3D Realms kickstarting it. Besides, you’re too late, Chris Roberts is already on the case.

It`s almost as if everyone suddenly forgot about the existence of Oolite, not to mention that Elite IV is still in the pipeline after the better part of a decade. At least try not to be outdone by an open-source, Mr. Braben, come on!